chuqui@cae780.UUCP (12/16/83)
Actually, not so new a thing. Its time for my every so often question of
'Why do these topics exist?' and this month I have chosen the following
topics:
net.applic - applicative language and related architecture.
net.college- college, college activities, campus life, etc.
net.games.pacman- guess what?
net.movies.sw- For the now complete (for now) SW sagas
net.rec.birds- this topic is for the birds
net.rec.skydive- for plummeting from planes
net.usoft.s- S stat pack
net.vvs- vortex video system
These are our candidates. With the exception on net.movies.sw, I don't have
any record of activities on these topics since my site has been up (about
two months now). In almost all cases, there are alternate places for people
to not talk about these subjects (applic to net.arch and net.lang, rec.* to
net.rec, usoft.s to usoft, vvs to graphics, etc)... I hereby let it be
known that the supporters of these things should sit up and be heard, or I
am going to start zapping them one of these days... Its obvious that these
topics have outlived their usefulness so we might as well start cleaning up
the net by disappearing them.
I am open to the floor for nominations for additional candidates,
discussions at to why I am {insane,idiotic,megalomaniac,<your_word>} and
general flaming...riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (12/18/83)
As long as we're arguing about removing newsgroups:
Can anybody give me a good reason why both net.music and net.records should
exist? According to the official list of newsgroups, the two groups are
theoretically:
net.music Music lovers' group.
net.records Records, both new and old, of all musical varieties.
In practice, however, I can detect no such difference. People seem to freely
discuss records in net.music and musical styles in net.records (as one might
well expect, since the two are inseparable in an age of recorded music).
I see no distinction made between the two groups in terms of the kinds of
music discussed (z.B. classical in one group and pop in the other) or the
seriousness of the discussions (z.B. trivia quizzes in one group and reviews
in the other). An informal survey of the recent articles archived on ut-sally
shows 164 items in net.music and 51 in net.records. Of these, 20 are
duplicated in both groups, representing 12% of net.music and 39% of net.records.
This being the case, why doesn't net.records simply adjourn to net.music? Does
the confusion continue out of sheer inertia? If so, it seems to me that an
announcement and a "cancel" command would solve at least part of the problem.
Cold weather always makes me yearn for decisive measures :-) ,
Prentiss Riddle
{ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle